Saturday, 12 March 2011

Cas Troskie

Cas Troskie

My book Biplots in Practice (see later below) is dedicated to Cas Troskie, who passed away earlier this year. In the preface of my book I wrote the following:

"This book is appropriately dedicated to Prof. Cas Troskie, former head of the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa, and a maestro of theoretical and applied multivariate analysis. Cas was one of the most influential people in my statistical career, in fact when he visited me on Barcelona on several occasions I always introduced him as the reason behind my decision to do Statistics as a major in my initial Bachelor of Science studies at UCT. As early as 1969, aged 33 and the youngest department head on the UCT campus, he was encouraging students like myself to write computer programs and put decks of punched cards into card readers linked to the university computer and wait expectantly for printouts to emerge with the results. He had a singular faith in principal components of a data set, which prepared me for my subsequent studies in France on correspondence analysis. I am not alone in being affected by his dynamic personality and sharp intelligence, since he inspired dozens of Masters and PhD theses, leaving a huge legacy to the statistical community, not only in South Africa but worldwide."

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That's me!

I am a university professor, for the last 23 years at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, working mostly in statistics in environmental and social sciences. I like combining my scientific and musical interests, especially during my travels.
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